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Category: Human rights/civil liberties

The Israeli-U.S. supply scheme in Gaza is slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid

The Israeli-U.S. supply scheme in Gaza is slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid

Médecins Sans Frontières: The Israeli-US food distribution scheme in Gaza, Palestine, launched one month ago, is degrading Palestinians by design, forcing them to choose between starvation or risking their lives for minimal supplies. With over 500 people killed and nearly 4,000 wounded while seeking food, this scheme is slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid and must be immediately dismantled. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) calls on the Israeli authorities and their allies to lift the siege on food, fuel, medical, and humanitarian…

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Zohran Mamdani has the Palestinian protest movement to thank for his win

Zohran Mamdani has the Palestinian protest movement to thank for his win

Heba Gowayed writes: In a tremendous upset of politics as usual, Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old brown, Muslim, Democratic socialist who had little name recognition in February beat the poster boy of the Democratic party establishment, Andrew Cuomo, by a plurality of votes in the first round of the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City. What makes this win even more remarkable is that Mamdani has refused to back down from his vocal support for Palestinian liberation, a position…

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Trump’s immigration arrests are seeing a wave of resistance

Trump’s immigration arrests are seeing a wave of resistance

HuffPost reports: Recent weeks have seen the Trump administration’s “mass deportation” program kick into overdrive. Militarized federal agents are working hard to meet the White House’s sky-high arrest quotas, and the number of people in immigration detention is surging past record highs. That means focusing even more on otherwise law-abiding people who happen to have irregular immigration statuses ― people who pay taxes, show up to court dates and check-ins, work hard to provide for their families, and followed previous administrations’ rules to apply for humanitarian protections. It also means interrogating people at swap…

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Florida plan for ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ migrant jail sparks chorus of outrage

Florida plan for ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ migrant jail sparks chorus of outrage

The Guardian reports: Environmental groups, immigration rights activists and a Native American tribe have decried the construction of a harsh outdoor migrant detention camp in the Florida Everglades billed by state officials as “Alligator Alcatraz”. Crews began preparing the facility at a remote, largely disused training airfield this week in support of the Trump administration’s aggressive goal of arresting and incarcerating 3,000 undocumented migrants every day. It is among a number of controversial new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) jails…

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The U.S. is about to embark on a terrifying experiment in mass statelessness

The U.S. is about to embark on a terrifying experiment in mass statelessness

Matt Watkins writes: Let’s say a child is born this year in El Paso, Texas. Her parents are undocumented but long-settled, working in construction and child care, respectively. They’ve lived in the United States for over a decade, pay taxes, raise their children, attend church, and volunteer at the elementary school. Their daughter arrives in the early hours of a Tuesday morning, 6 pounds and healthy, her name already chosen. A nurse congratulates the family and hands over an administrative…

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ICE detention centers are inundated by life-threatening incidents, delayed treatment, and overcrowding

ICE detention centers are inundated by life-threatening incidents, delayed treatment, and overcrowding

Wired reports: On April 28, a nurse at the Aurora ICE Processing Center near Denver called 911. A woman in custody, four months pregnant, had arrived at the facility’s medical unit, bleeding and in pain. As the staff rushed to get vitals, the dispatcher rattled off questions: How old was she? Was the pregnancy high risk? The nurse hesitated: “She just came to us three days ago.” On 911 audio obtained by WIRED, the dispatcher’s voice cuts in: “Is there…

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Trump’s masked henchmen challenge local police, sowing fear across LA and the rest of America

Trump’s masked henchmen challenge local police, sowing fear across LA and the rest of America

The Los Angeles Times reports: Increasingly aggressive immigration raids carried out by masked federal agents, sometimes using unmarked vehicles, are creating problems for local law enforcement agencies. Police have little or no insight into where the federal enforcement actions are taking place but often have to deal with the aftermath, including protests and questions from residents about what exactly happened. In some cases, local cops have been mistaken for federal agents, eroding years of work to have immigrant communities trust…

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The Supreme Court just stripped thousands of immigrants of their right to due process

The Supreme Court just stripped thousands of immigrants of their right to due process

Ian Millhiser writes: In a short, one-paragraph order, the Republican justices ruled on Monday evening that President Donald Trump may effectively nullify a federal law and an international treaty that is supposed to protect immigrants from torture. The Court’s order in Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D. does not explain the GOP’s justices’ reasoning, although Justice Sonia Sotomayor responds to their silent decision in a 19-page dissent joined by her two Democratic colleagues. The Court’s order is only temporary, and…

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Gaza and the undoing of Zionism

Gaza and the undoing of Zionism

Yakov M. Rabkin writes: During a sabbatical I spent in West Jerusalem in the late 1980s, my 7-year-old daughter was enrolled in an Israeli school. One day, she came home and could not find her tricycle anywhere. “Arabs must have stolen it,” she said. We later found the tricycle behind the building, but her immediate assumption gave me pause. Just a few months in, an Israeli school had already planted seeds of anti-Arab prejudice in her young mind. In response,…

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‘It felt like kidnapping,’ Mahmoud Khalil says in first interview after release

‘It felt like kidnapping,’ Mahmoud Khalil says in first interview after release

The New York Times reports: Mahmoud Khalil sat in a Manhattan apartment dotted with posters and signs calling for his freedom and described the moment 105 days before when plainclothes immigration agents had handcuffed him in the building lobby. “All the ‘Know Your Rights’ information and fliers I read and familiarized myself with were useless,” Mr. Khalil said. “There are no rights in such situations.” “It felt like kidnapping,” he said. Mr. Khalil, a 30-year-old Columbia University graduate and U.S….

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The people being disappeared by ICE in Los Angeles

The people being disappeared by ICE in Los Angeles

Emily Witt writes: On Tuesday, June 17th, Nancy Urizar was at her job working in the fund-raising department of a Jesuit boys’ high school in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts when her phone rang. “It was just a normal day for me,” she said. “It was twelve, and I had just come back from lunch.” On the other end of the line was her father’s landlord. Some friends of her dad’s had come over, the landlord told her, and…

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‘The Hunger Games’: Inside Israel’s aid death traps for starving Gazans

‘The Hunger Games’: Inside Israel’s aid death traps for starving Gazans

Ahmed Ahmed and Ibtisam Mahdi report: In the early hours of June 11, before sunrise, 19-year-old Hatem Shaldan and his brother Hamza, 23, went to wait for aid trucks near the Netzarim Corridor in the central Gaza Strip. They hoped to return with a bag of white flour for their family of five. Instead, Hamza returned with his younger brother’s body wrapped in a white burial shroud. The Shaldan family had lived virtually without food for nearly two months due…

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With Iran war as pretext, Israel suffocates the West Bank

With Iran war as pretext, Israel suffocates the West Bank

Shatha Yaish reports: As Israelis awoke early last Friday morning to discover that their country had started a war with Iran, Palestinians in the West Bank found that the Israeli army had placed them under lockdown. Closures and checkpoints have been the norm in the occupied territory for decades, becoming even more numerous and restrictive in the wake of October 7. But after striking Iran, the army reduced Palestinians’ movement to a near-total standstill — sealing off towns and cities with iron gates, closing checkpoints between the West…

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How the Trump regime is emulating the Pinochet regime

How the Trump regime is emulating the Pinochet regime

HuffPost reports: The only information Ysqueibel Yonaiquer Peñaloza Chirinos’ family has received about him in the past three months came from former Republican congressman Matt Gaetz. Gaetz probably didn’t mean to help. But last month, as part of a propaganda video for the far-right One America News Network, he took a tour of the infamous Salvadoran prison to which President Donald Trump has sent hundreds of U.S. immigrants for indefinite detention, without charge, trial or sentencing: El Centro de Confinamiento…

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The planned expulsion of Gaza’s population is already underway

The planned expulsion of Gaza’s population is already underway

Gadi Algazi writes: Maybe you were waiting for the alarm bells to ring, or for the Israeli army spokesperson to issue an official announcement. But the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, long referred to in Israeli parlance as “transfer,” is already underway. Not in some distant future. Right now. It’s not exactly happening before Israeli eyes — it’s always possible to look away — but the echoes are reaching Israeli homes. The thundering blasts from Gaza heard across the…

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Families arrested in Los Angeles ICE raids held in basements with little food or water, lawyers say

Families arrested in Los Angeles ICE raids held in basements with little food or water, lawyers say

The Guardian reports: As federal agents rushed to arrest immigrants across Los Angeles, they confined detainees – including families with small children – in a stuffy office basement for days without sufficient food and water, according to immigration lawyers. One family with three children were held inside a Los Angeles-area administrative building for 48 hours after being arrested on Thursday immediately after an immigration court hearing, according to lawyers from the Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef), which is providing non-profit…

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